News & Features

CAEE Department Welcomes New Faculty Member

Jan.16, 2018

The Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering is pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Blair Johnson.

Johnson recently completed a Postdoc at Arizona State University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Her technical interests include environmental fluid mechanics, turbulence and mixing processes, sediment transport, and experimental methods. Johnson’s research will break down complex environmental flows into fundamental components to understand the driving fluid mechanics processes responsible for mixing and transport in the environment. This work is applicable to coastal erosion, volcanic eruptions, oil spills, and many other sources of air and water pollution.

Her team will study phenomena such as breaking waves, stratified flows, fluid-structure interaction, and sediment transport in a unique laboratory facility at the Center for Water and the Environment at UT Austin’s Pickle Research Center.

Johnson will begin teaching the undergraduate course 319F Elementary Mechanics of Fluids during the Spring 2018 semester. She plans to create an interactive and creative classroom and lab environment that allows students to approach a multitude of challenges and successfully reach solutions.